Is this the crash where the pilot failed to recognize the airspeed sensors had frozen up and he stalled the plane? I could see how this was an Air France fault since the pilot was not properly trained or experienced to fly this plane in these conditions. Not sure why Airbus is responsible.

▲

NooneAtAll3 6 hours ago | parent [-]

it's the crash where pushing nose of the plane down (correct enough-altitude stall response) caused alarms to activate, while pulling nose up caused alarms to silence

no wonder airbus was found guilty

▲

bombcar 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Airbus kind of embodies the "trust the computer" mentality; and if you're going to do that the computer damn hell better be right all the time - it must not have "backwards" failure modes.

Boeing, in similar situations "in the past" would just sound a "computer is giving the fuck up, fly this pig dog" bell and leave it to the pilots to figure it out.

	▲	actionfromafar an hour ago \| parent [-]
		You made me laugh out loud! Very well put.

▲

exidy 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The behaviour you describe above only occurred after the pilot flying stalled the plane. There was a procedure for unreliable airspeed indication. Had the pilot flying performed it, the situation would have been resolved without incident.

AF could perhaps be held liable for insufficient training on high-altitude stalls or recognising and responding to reversions to alternate law. But it's hard to see how Airbus can be responsible for a pilot ignoring the most basic first response.

	▲	fweimer an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The article from this subthread contradicts this, though. Regarding recoverability of the situation, it says this: > By now the airspeed indications had returned to normal, but the pilots had already set in motion a sequence of events which could not be undone. That was before the prolonged stall warnings. But maybe this phrasing is just an embellishment? But further down, the article is pretty clear that the training was inadequate for this type of unreliable airspeed indication: > Although procedures for other phases of flight could be found in the manual, the training conditioned pilots to expect unreliable airspeed events during climb, to which they would respond with a steady nose-up pitch and high power setting that would ensure a shallow ascent. Such a response would be completely inappropriate in cruise.

▲

anonymars 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thank you, this accident reminds me a bit of the McDonald's coffee lawsuit, where the popular narrative of "be less of a dummy" is not really fair

Edit -- to wit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48253931

▲

refurb 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

While true, pilots aren’t trained to just “respond to the alarm” they are trained to fly the plane.

Once there were multiple alarms that made no sense at all (petty early in the event), the pilots should have ignored them as per the checklist.

But the most damning thing is the one pilot pulling the stick back and holding it back for almost the entire event. There aren’t any flying conditions where that’s an appropriate input. Not to mention being told to give up control and ignoring that request.

I agree Airbus has some blame in terms of the computer system not adequately communicating when it drops out of normal mode.